Art and/in the Anthropocene

The following forum emerges from a panel called Art and/in the Anthropocene: A Debate on Sustainability and Ecology that was co-organized by Natalie Loveless and Jessie Beier for the Kule Institute for Advanced Study’s Around the World e-Conference in May of 2018. The conference panel invited discussion by six artist-scholars in addition to the organizers – Karin Bolender, Christa Donner, Mia Feuer, Leanne Olson, Scott Smallwood and Andrew Yang. Together they discussed two pre-circulated questions: one on sustainability and one on ecological form. Organized and edited by Loveless, the contributions in this forum respond to these questions. Yang argues for systems thinking in the context of art and ecology; Bolender considers multispecies care practices; Donner makes a plea for intergenerational empathy and collective problem-solving; Olson examines our disavowed relations to waste; Smallwood grapples with problems of representing the Anthropocene; Beier reflects, in a speculative-fictive form, on the folly of attempting to sustain our current ways of living and dying; and Loveless concludes with a reflection on art, ecological form and climate justice ethics. Together these short essays invite the reader to consider the role of art in creating new conditions for climate justice thinking and action.